THE CURSE OF HAM
R A C E A N D S L AV E R Y I N E A R L Y
JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY,
AND ISLAM
David M. Goldenberg
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
xi
1
PART ONE IMAGES OF BLACKS
ONE
Biblical Israel: The Land of Kush 17
TWO
Biblical Israel: The People of Kush 26
THREE
Postbiblical Israel: Black Africa 41
FOUR
Postbiblical Israel: Black Africans 46
PART TWO THE COLOR OF SKIN
FIVE
The Color of Women 79
SIX
The Color of Health 93
SEVEN
The Colors of Mankind 95
EIGHT
The Colored Meaning of Kushite in Postbiblical Literature 113
PART THREE HISTORY
NINE
Evidence for Black Slaves in Israel 131
viii
CONTENTS
PART FOUR AT THE CROSSROADS
OF HISTORY AND EXEGESIS
TEN
Was Ham Black? 141
ELEVEN
“Ham Sinned and Canaan was Cursed?!” 157
TWELVE
The Curse of Ham 168
THIRTEEN
The Curse of Cain 178
FOURTEEN
The New World Order: Humanity by Physiognomy 183
Conclusion
Jewish Views of Black Africans and the Development
of Anti-Black Sentiment in Western Thought 195
APPENDIX I
When is a Kushite not a Kushite? Cases of Mistaken Identity 201
APPENDIX II
Kush/Ethiopia and India 211
NOTES
213
GLOSSARY OF SOURCES AND TERMS 379
SUBJECT INDEX 395
INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES
413
INDEX OF MODERN SCHOLARS
431
INTRODUCTION
Blackness and Slavery
The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem,
Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three
were the sons of Noah; and from these the whole earth was
peopled. Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted
a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and
lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw
the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon both their
shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of
their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see
their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and
knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed
be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.”
(Gen 9:18–25, RSV)
T
HIS BIBLICAL STORY has been the single greatest justification
for Black slavery for more than a thousand years. It is a strange justification indeed, for there is no reference in it to Blacks at all. And
yet just about everyone, especially in the antebellum American South, understood that in this story God meant to curse black Africans with eternal
slavery, the so-called Curse of Ham. As one proslavery author wrote in
1838, “The blacks were originally designed to vassalage by the Patriarch
Noah.”1
This book attempts to explain how and why this strange interpretation
of the biblical text took hold. It does so by looking at the larger picture,
that is, by uncovering just how Blacks were perceived by those people for
whom the Bible was a central text. What did the early Jews, Christians, and
Muslims see when they looked at the black African? Clearly, the biblical interpretation is forced. How, then, did the biblical authors view Blacks and
what were the postbiblical forces that wrung such a view from the Bible?
This is a book about the ancient link between black skin color and slav-
2
INTRODUCTION
ery. It is, thus, a study of perceptions, symbolic associations, and historical
ramifications. It explores how dark-skinned people were perceived in antiquity, how negative associations attached to the color black were played
out on the stage of history, and how the connection between blackness and
slavery became enshrined in the Curse of Ham.
In 1837 the painter and theorist Jacques Nicolas Paillot de Montabert
wrote:
White is the symbol of Divinity or God;
Black is the symbol of the evil spirit or the demon.
White is the symbol of light . . .
Black is the symbol of darkness and darkness expresses all evils.
White is the emblem of harmony;
Black is the emblem of chaos.
White signifies supreme beauty;
Black ugliness.
White signifies perfection;
Black signifies vice.
White is the symbol of innocence;
Black, that of guilt, sin, and moral degradation.
White, a positive color, indicates happiness;
Black, a negative color, indicates misfortune.
The battle between good and evil is symbolically expressed
By the opposition of white and black.2
De Montabert wrote these words in a manual for artists. For us, they starkly
demonstrate how deeply and in how many varied ways black-white symbolism is part of Western culture.
Some scholars argue that these associations were the cause of Black enslavement for centuries. They claim that the negative value of blackness—
whether due to a psychological association of darkness with fear of the
unknown or due to some other cause—underlies the negative sentiment
toward dark-skinned people that resulted in Black slavery.3 The historian
Winthrop Jordan especially assigns a great deal of weight to the Africans’
skin color. The associations of black and white as symbolic of evil and good,
sin and purity, and the like, Jordan argues, were transferred to human beings when the light-skinned English came into contact with the darkskinned Africans.4 Speaking of the slaves in antebellum America, Toni Morrison put it this way:
The distinguishing features of the not-Americans were their slave status, their
social status—and their color. It is conceivable that the first would have selfdestructed in a variety of ways had it not been for the last. These slaves, unlike many others in the world’s history, were visible to a fault. And they had
INTRODUCTION
3
inherited, among other things, a long history on the meaning of color; it was that
this color “meant” something.5
“Color meant something.” Indeed, it meant a great deal. And it conveyed
the same negative associations in many different cultures. The same blackwhite color symbolism seen in Western traditions is found in China and
South Asia.6 It has been found among the Chiang (a Sino-Tibetan people), the Mongour (a Mongolian people), the Chuckchees of Siberia, and
the Creek Indians of North America.7 It is in Sanskrit, Caledonian, and
Japanese, as well as Western, literature.8 Indeed, according to many anthropology reports, the phenomenon is common even in black Africa.9 It
appears that the symbolism of black-negative and white-positive is widespread among peoples of all colors.10
The same associations of black and white are also found in our earliest
written records in the ancient Near East and the classical world.11 In Christianity these associations played a large role in the meanings given to light
and darkness. “There is continual conflict between the world of darkness,
that is sin, error and death, and the figure of Christ who is light, truth and
life.”12 Jesus is “the light of the world” (John 8:12, 9:5). “God is light and
in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It played an even larger
role when the church fathers in the third century began to allegorize the
scriptural Black (the “Ethiopian”) as sin, as we shall see later. The common
patristic depiction of devils as Ethiopians was of one cloth with this symbolism in the service of exegesis.
The negative symbolism of the color black may indeed have influenced
how the light-skinned European came to perceive the dark-skinned African. Some sociologists, however, have questioned whether black-white
symbolism “must necessarily transfer to social relations”; to see blackness
as a metaphor for negative values, they claim, is not the same as seeing black
people negatively.13 We cannot so easily jump from abstract metaphor to
human reality.
Whether or not the negative value of blackness was the cause of antiBlack sentiment, and whether or not anti-Black sentiment led to Black slavery, it is clear that already by the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade in
the fifteenth century Black and slave were inextricably joined in the Christian mind. Over and over again one finds Black enslavement justified with
a reference to the biblical story of the curse of eternal servitude pronounced
against Ham, considered to be the father of black Africa.
This book looks at the relationship between color symbolism and color
prejudice and asks whether the former must lead to the latter, and whether
color prejudice, strictly defined, must lead to ethnic prejudice. It seeks to
uncover that point in time when blackness and slavery were first joined and
it tracks the Western justification for the join in an evolving biblical inter-
4
INTRODUCTION
pretation. The focus of the study is on those civilizations that accepted the
Bible as a basis of life.
It begins the investigation by examining the ancient Jewish world. This
is not accidental. If a biblically rooted Western civilization came to exhibit
anti-Black sentiment over many centuries, could the origin of such sentiment lie in the Bible? If Christian exegesis from the earliest centuries interpreted the scriptural Black as sinner and understood the devil to be an
Ethiopian, could these interpretations derive from Christianity’s cradle, ancient Judaism? The question takes on even greater importance in light of
recent writings by scholars and nonscholars alike who have concluded that
there is indeed an underlying anti-Black sentiment in early Jewish society.14
Was Jewish antiquity where anti-Black attitudes originated and became
fixed in Western civilization? To answer this question I examine how Jews
of the ancient world perceived black Africans over a fifteen-hundred-year
period, from about 800 B.C.E. until the eighth century C.E. after the appearance of Islam. What images of Blacks are found in Jewish literature of
this period and what attitudes about Blacks are implicit in those images?
How did Jewish society of the biblical and postbiblical periods relate to
darker-skinned people, whether African or not? The examination of the ancient Jewish world will provide the necessary framework in which to examine and understand the biblical Curse of Ham text and its later interpretations in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic exegesis. If the biblical Curse
reflects an anti-Black sentiment, that sentiment should be found elsewhere
in early Jewish literature. If it is not, then we must account for the development of such sentiment and for its expression in the various biblical interpretive traditions.
From Exegesis to History
The importance of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) for Judaism, Christianity, and even Islam is obvious and can be gauged by the enormous
quantity of biblical interpretation and expansion generated by these three
faith-cultures and their offshoots. More than the quantity, it is most striking how the same interpretive traditions with and without variation are so
widely disseminated among these monotheistic faiths. How can one account for this melting pot of biblical interpretation? Of course, when Christianity and Islam accepted the Jewish Bible as part of their heritage, they
inherited as well some of Judaism’s interpretations of its sacred text. It is
often noted that the Qurhan and later Islamic stories about biblical personalities and events (isrāHı¯liyyāt) reflect much of ancient Jewish biblical
interpretation. As the ninth-century traditionist, al-Bukhārı̄, wrote: “The
Jews used to read the Torah in Hebrew and to interpret it to the people of
INTRODUCTION
15
5
Islam in Arabic.” The same is true for Christianity in Asia Minor and the
lands of the Near East. The Christian Syriac Bible translation, the Peshit ta,
has been shown to contain many Jewish interpretations embedded in its
translation. The church fathers of the East, especially, but not only, Ephrem
(d. 373), transmit Jewish midrashic explanations again and again. Origen
(d. ca. 253), who wrote in Greek, not Syriac, lived in the Near East, first
in Alexandria, then in Caesarea, and his works too contain many Jewish interpretations. So do the writings of Jerome, who lived in Bethlehem.16
Sometimes these church fathers quote a contemporary, usually anonymous, Jewish source (e.g., “the Hebrew”). Many times they transmit a
Jewish interpretation without attribution.
Of course, there are uniquely Christian and Islamic biblical interpretations. Jewish midrash, for example, sees no foreshadowing (“types”) of
Jesus or Muh ammad in the Hebrew Bible. But even many of the unique
Christian or Islamic interpretations can often be seen to reflect earlier, Jewish, thinking. The concept of the logos, for example, which John 1:1–18
applies to Jesus (“In the beginning was the word [logos], and the word was
with God, and the word was God. . . . Through him all things were
made. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”), is
used by the Jewish philosopher Philo (b. ca. 25 B.C.E.) as a device by means
of which the infinite, transcendent God was able to create a finite, real
world—the way an immaterial God can make contact with a material world.
Similarly, the metaphor of light and darkness used by the early Christians
(“You are all children of light,” 1 Thessalonians 5:4–5; the Two Ways of
Light and Darkness, Barnabas 18–20) is an echo of the dualistic theology
of the Dead Sea sect (the “children of light” and the “children of darkness”).17 In other words, Hebrew Scripture together with its early Jewish
interpretation became part of the common heritage of all biblically based
cultures in the Near East during the first several centuries of the Common
Era. If the church fathers transmit originally Jewish expansions and explanations without attribution, it is not because they want to hide their Jewish source, but because these interpretations had become part of the biblical package lived and studied by all, the way one read and understood the
Bible. It was the vehicle of intellectual intercourse and commonality as
much as the basis of, and impetus for, differentiation.
Whether Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, biblical exegetical traditions
moved freely among the geographically and culturally contiguous civilizations of the Near East. It is precisely the fluidity of the various interpretations and legends that provides a unique opportunity for cross-cultural investigation. When we can determine the direction of a tradition, the very
confessional permeability of biblical exegesis becomes a historical witness
to changes in attitudes and perceptions. For as exegesis crossed denominational lines it took on new coloring reflecting its new environment. By
6
INTRODUCTION
recognizing “the interactive character of such inter-hermeneutic encounters,” we can “elucidate the dynamics by which religions incorporate, idealize, repress, deny, and otherwise remake their inheritance, as that inheritance is recreated.”18 “Tracing the threads” while tracking the changes
provides evidence of the new attitudes and views conditioned by the new
environment, just as within one culture exegetical changes over time reflect changes in attitudes due to different historical circumstances. In other
words, following biblical interpretation synchronically as well as diachronically provides us a picture of changing views, opinions, and attitudes
within and among the monotheistic cultures. By tracking exegetical traditions concerning black Africans across confessional lines, we can see how
and why the original Jewish biblical interpretations change as they move
into the different cultural orbits, and we can trace the trajectory as they
move back into Judaism.
The main traditions on which I focus in this regard revolve around the
biblical figure of Ham and the infamous Curse of Ham. I follow the exegetical changes in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literature, showing the
origin of this postbiblical idea, how and when it took root, and how it was
exegetically integrated into the biblical text. In other words, I show how
non-Blacks began to look at Blacks as slaves and how this new perspective
was reflected in biblical exegesis. In a related section, I track a second group
of traditions that reflect another change, one of far-reaching consequences
still with us today, that is, a new way of categorizing humanity—not by language, or religion, or citizenship, but by physiognomy, especially skin
color. In sum, in this book I attempt to uncover the origins and development of anti-Black sentiment in Western civilization as reflected in the
Bible and in postbiblical exegetical tradition, and how biblical exegesis was
used to justify Black slavery.
The Plan of the Book
The book is structured in four parts. In Part I, where the investigation focuses on early Jewish views of the black African, the material is investigated
chronologically rather than thematically, that is, biblical evidence is looked
at first and then the postbiblical texts. This approach allows us to see continuities and discontinuities more clearly. It also allows for an informed
approach to later ambiguous material. A prime example of what can happen when this approach is not taken can be seen in the claim of a recent
work that in a rabbinic text “black people are described as drunken people.”19 I show later in this work that this reading of the rabbinic text is
based on a scribal error; that the manuscripts and first printed edition
speak of blackness rather than drunkenness; and that the correct reading
INTRODUCTION
7
was already incorporated into a number of modern translations.20 The
text, in other words, describes Blacks as being black, not drunk. What is
of importance here is that had the author considered the chronologically
prior material, he would have found nothing to indicate that such a perception should appear in the rabbinic corpus. That conclusion would have
led him to question the text as he understood it and, perhaps, to discover
the correct reading. As a West African saying puts it, “If you do not know
where you are or where you have been, you cannot know where you are
going.”21
This study documents several such examples of misreading of the
sources, many of which cases are ultimately due to an assumption that the
way things are now is the way things were in the past. The tendency is
strong to read the past from the perspective of one’s own time and place.
It is especially important, however, to avoid this mistake when dealing with
the topic of this book, for our perceptions of the Black have been conditioned by the intervening history of centuries of Black slavery and its manifold ramifications. Unfortunately, in too many cases we shall see that that
mistake has not been avoided by those who attempt to read the past with
the limited tools at their disposal.
In Part II, I move the inquiry from Black as an ethnic group to black as
a color, and examine Jewish views of, and attitudes toward, dark skin color.
The question is necessarily broader than asking about attitudes toward
black Africans. Dark- and darker-skinned people are found in a variety of
ethnic groups, and within the same ethnic group. Do we find in the Jewish sources disapproving attitudes toward dark skin color irrespective of the
ethnic group? Does ancient Jewish literature exhibit a particular sentiment
toward the color of one’s skin?
Part III steps back from the examination of Jewish perceptions and attitudes and asks a more general and more concrete historical question: how
early can we date Black slavery? Here I seek to determine if and when the
black African became identified as slave in the Near East. The question is
important for this study because an identity of Black with slave would be
expected to influence views and opinions of the Black found in the literature. If we find no such influence in the Bible, it would indicate that such
an identification did not take place in the biblical period. If it can then be
demonstrated, as I believe it can, that an identification of Black and slave
occurred in the postbiblical period, we should expect to find reinterpretations of biblical literature to coincide with the new historical situation and
view of the black African as slave. Such reinterpretation, of course, happens
in every age to every people who seek to live by the Book.
Part IV focuses on the reinterpretation of the Bible that occurred as a
result of this new historical situation, that is the identification of Black with
slave. The primary interpretive enterprise reflecting the new historical sit-
8
INTRODUCTION
uation concerns the Curse of Ham. I track the exegetical changes in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literature, showing how these interpretations became historically possible, how they were textually implemented, and what
views and attitudes underlie the exegesis. Methodologically, this section is
the heart of the study. It shows how postbiblical literature, even if informed
by the biblical world and even if formally structured around the Bible, nevertheless greatly reflects its own world. The Bible is not so much a framework, conceptual and structural, into which all subsequent thinking must
fit (conform), as it is a grid upon which postbiblical thinking asserts itself,
and in the process changes the biblical blueprint. The metaphor is equally
applicable to all Bible-based religions. Judaism, Christianity (west and
east), Islam, and even Samaritanism all refashioned the biblical grid, which,
when read carefully, becomes a network of historical data. By looking at
how the Bible is reinterpreted at different times and places we can detect
shifting mentalités, and under them we can delineate historical changes.
Conversely, if we know when and where crucial historical changes occur,
we can explain how and why the interpretation-shaping attitudes began.
Playing the two sides of the equation against each other, I show how history and exegesis are intimately related and how the exegetical mirror can
act as a lens focusing on historical changes.
The set of views, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes regarding black Africans
and how they have been perceived has a long and complex development.
The history of Western perceptions of the black African has many tributaries, and we today are the most recent inheritors of this long accumulating history. In this sense, the results of this study are diametrically opposed
to the view expressed by John Ralph Willis in his study “The Image of the
African in Arabic Literature.” Willis wrote that “there is no need to dwell
on the unpleasant statements in Arabic literature regarding peoples of
African descent. . . . The matter which concerns us here is the origin of the
unfavorable attitude. . . . Those Arab writers showing antagonism to people of dark color echoed the external traditions of the Jews, Greeks and
perhaps others.”22 As if discovering origins will reveal Truth. As if the support mechanisms that keep an idea in place over millennia are irrelevant.23
Given the body of common Near Eastern traditions and the permeability
of each culture in admitting and transmitting these traditions, to speak of
origins, even were it possible, is not enough.
The Question of Racism
Throughout my research for this book I have had two models in mind,
Frank Snowden’s Blacks in Antiquity (1970) and Lloyd Thompson’s Romans and Blacks (1989). The question both authors sought to answer was
INTRODUCTION
9
whether the world of classical antiquity was racist. Snowden was not the
first to address the question, but he was the first to do so comprehensively.
His attempt to examine every reference to black Africans, both literary and
iconographic, in that world remains unsurpassed. With this magisterial
work in mind, I have aimed for the same type of comprehensiveness in the
Jewish world of antiquity. Thompson’s contribution was to bring greater
methodological nuance to the question of racism in antiquity. The main
critique that has been leveled against Snowden was that he closed his eyes
to obvious expressions of anti-Black sentiment in a world in which he believed there was none. Where Snowden refused to see anti-Black sentiment,
Thompson saw it but explained it not as racism but as “ethnocentric reactions to a strange and unfamiliar appearance,” and “expressions of conformism to the dominant aesthetic values.”24 Snowden saw this distinction
too, but Thompson made it an important methodological basis of his work:
“[Racism is evidenced by] reactions to an ideologically ascribed, and so almost infallibly predictable, social significance of a given set of somatic characteristics,” whereas ethnocentrism, “a natural and universally evidenced
human response,” would allow for negative reactions to a strange and unfamiliar somatic appearance.25 Ancient Roman society was indeed ethnocentric, but it was not racist.
The conclusion, shared by both classicists, that the ancient world was not
racist hinges on their acceptance of the definition of racism as a socially defined creation. Racism exists when social structures assign “inferior and unalterable roles and rights” to a specific group; when this group cannot,
practically speaking, assume the superior roles and rights of the dominant
group; when a belief system or ideology supports these social structures;
and when the group is defined by biological descent and perceptions of
somatic and cultural identity. Looked at from the other direction, racial
prejudice defines a set of attitudes that underlie discriminatory social structures. It is an attitude “that rests on an ideological perception of the individual as necessarily possessing particular desirable or undesirable qualities
by virtue of his or her membership in a given socially defined group, in a
social context in which the individual can do nothing to alter the basic situation.”26 This definition assumes two crucial differences between racism
and ethnocentrism: biology and socially embedded discrimination.
Not everyone, however, agrees with this definition of racism. Others
would consider any kind of social discrimination to be racist. Not biological
hierarchy, but any hierarchy defines racism, for example, the cultural hierarchy of citizen-barbarian practiced in the Greco-Roman world, what others call ethnocentrism—in other words, institutionalized discrimination of
any sort.27 Still others would keep the biology and remove the social structures. To them, racism is “an ideology based on the conception that racial
groups form a biogenetic hierarchy” period. Attributing inferiority or su-
10
INTRODUCTION
periority to people on the basis of biological traits, “congenital inferiority”
in the language of philosopher Harry Bracken, is the essence of racism.28
It seemed to me that if I would try to determine whether ancient Jewish
society was racist, I would soon be up to my neck in theoretical quicksand.
As an African American student once said in my class, racism is like obscenity, with which it is closely related: you know it when you see it, although it
may be hard to define. When dealing with the Jewish material, therefore, I
decided not to ask whether ancient Judaism was racist but instead to ask a
simpler question: how did ancient Jewish society look at the black African?
Only in the concluding chapter do I come back to the issue of racism to see
how the answer to this question does or does not accord with various definitions of racism. I reasoned that to approach the topic this way would in any
event lead to richer results, for it would attempt to describe in all its colors
how Jews of antiquity, and then Christians and Muslims, perceived Blacks.
Some Remarks on Sources and Terminology
The Nature of the Evidence
The first half of this study explores the images of the black African found
in Jewish society of the biblical and postbiblical periods. What is the nature
of these images? As opposed to the Greco-Roman, and then Christian,
world, they are not iconographic. There are some examples of representational art in early-century mosaics and in the wall paintings of the thirdcentury Dura-Europas synagogue, but these depictions (mostly biblical
scenes) contain no Blacks and thus provide no evidence for our purposes.
Our images are all literary, starting with the Hebrew Bible of ancient Israel, continuing with Jewish writings in Greek, apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works, and the Dead Sea (Qumran) literature in the HellenisticRoman periods, and concluding with the rabbinic corpus (Talmud and
Midrash) composed during the first seven or eight centuries C.E. The Bible
consists of several different genres of literature, from the creation epics in
Genesis to the love poem of Song of Songs, from the national founding
narrative of Exodus to the universal wisdom of Proverbs. These many different genres and topics were gradually brought together and canonized
as the core document of Judaism. But even before canonization occurred,
and even while there were variant versions of some of its parts, this body
of literature assumed a deep centrality in Jewish society. As a consequence,
the vast majority of postbiblical Jewish literature consists of interpretation,
expansion, commentary, discussion, and paraphrase of the Bible. Whether
pseudepigraphic expansion or rabbinic interpretation, whether Philo’s allegory or Pseudo-Philo’s paraphrase, postbiblical Jewish literature generally takes the Bible as its starting point and its focus.
INTRODUCTION
11
Determining a society’s attitudes and perspectives from its literary remains
is fraught with methodological difficulties. As Lloyd Thompson put it, “We
depend almost entirely on the surviving remarks of a few long-dead people,
none of which remarks was made in response to any carefully-worded question put to them by us.”29 Not only may the remains not properly represent the society, or even one group in the society, but the attitudes and views
may never have been put into literary or iconographic form. In addition to
these general methodological problems, much of postbiblical Jewish literature has its own set of difficulties for the historian, especially when we seek
to uncover ideas and attitudes. This is particularly the case with regard to
rabbinic literature, for the nature of this literature is such that it does not
present systematic expositions of ideologies or attitudes. Such expositions
may or may not have occurred in the rabbinic academies or study circles, but
what we have in the extant literature does not record them. Furthermore,
rabbinic literature is transmitted in a uniquely rhetorical discourse that presents barriers to historical inquiry.30 The rabbinic medium does not allow
for individual expression of the type that we find in the contemporaneous
Greco-Roman world.31 We do not find a parallel to Juvenal who would express his prejudices and preferences without mediation or mitigation.
Nevertheless, any interpretation of the biblical text will be influenced,
however unconsciously, by the time and place of the interpreter, even as it
attempts to explain or expand (also an interpretation) the text it is interpreting. Depending on the literary genre, the reflections of the interpreter’s world may be explicit, like the pesher commentaries of the Dead
Sea Scrolls or the homilies of the modern-day rabbi or preacher, or they
may be implicit and hard to detect. Sometimes the influences of the interpreter’s world may not be found in the content of the interpretation at all
but only in the choice of one interpretation over another, or sometimes in
the choice of one biblical verse to be interpreted over another. But the interpreter’s world will surely be reflected in his work, one way or another.
And that world is not as narrowly defined as we tend to think from our
perspective two thousand years later. The Jews of antiquity and late antiquity did not live in a vacuum but were part of a larger society and culture,
a point abundantly reflected in the literature. The Hebrew Bible and the
Hebrew-Aramaic Talmud and Midrash are suffused with foreign words
and ideas. Rabbinic literature contains thousands of Greek loanwords that
became part of the Jewish lexicon, reflecting social, literary, economic,
and even theological influence. The opening chapters of the Bible are a
uniquely Jewish theological statement fashioned from, and on the framework
of, common ancient Near Eastern (Mesopotamian) material. The idiom,
linguistic structure, and underlying concepts of Psalms, to take another example, are part and parcel of a larger ancient Near Eastern (Ugaritic) literary world. And, of course, Jewish literature written in Greek is thoroughly
12
INTRODUCTION
Hellenistic. Two thousand years ago, as today, the Jewish world was constantly creating its world within a world, drawing on and reshaping foreign
ideas. If Jewish literature, therefore, is a mirror of Jewish thought, as it is,
then Jewish thought is a lens through which we may also perceive the nonJewish surrounding environment.
Rabbinic Literature and Terminology
Much of the rabbinic source material used in this study will be unfamiliar
to many readers. For this reason I have included a Glossary in which I
briefly present the dates, place of composition, editions, and translations of
the material, as well as definitions of unfamiliar terminology. Where available I have used critical editions of ancient texts, in which case the text is
cited by the traditional section division, followed by the page number of
the edition in parentheses. Thus GenR 36.7 (p. 341) refers to section 36.7,
which is on p. 341 in Theodor and Albeck’s edition of Genesis Rabba. For
many of these texts, dating cannot be precise and is often given within the
parameters of one or two centuries. Rabbinic texts and traditions chronologically belong either to the period of the tannaim (70–220 C.E.) or the
amoraim (220–500). Beyond that gross classification, dating of rabbinic
traditions is notoriously difficult, because anonymous early traditions may
appear in works that were redacted much later than the traditions themselves. Even traditions that are attributed to named authorities may be
much earlier than these authorities.32 On the other hand, some scholars,
emphasizing the role played by tradents and redactors of rabbinic traditions, accept the only certain date as the one of the final document in which
the tradition is embedded.33 My practice in this study is to date a tradition
to the time of the authority in whose name the tradition is recorded. For
our purposes, however, it matters little whether a tradition can be dated to,
say, the year 135 or to the tannaitic period in general. Chronologically
broad strokes in this regard will suffice. If the tradition is recorded anonymously, then I assign it the date of the redaction of the composition in
which the tradition appears. An exception is made in the case of anonymous statements preceded by introductory markers of the tannaitic period,
for example, tanyaH (“it is learned”), teno rabanan (“our Rabbis have
taught”), and so on. Such traditions appearing in works of the amoraic period are regarded as being authentically tannaitic. All dates that appear in
this study are C.E. unless otherwise noted.
The Rabbis
At times in this study I will speak of “the rabbinic view” of such-and-such
a matter. This does not mean that all Rabbis over more than four hundred
INTRODUCTION
13
years agreed on a particular point. That would be unlikely were it even
possible to ascertain a full documentation of rabbinic opinions. It means
rather, in the words of Jay Harris, “that there is a certain conception of the
past that finds expression in a number of rabbinic documents, that is not
explicitly challenged and that serves as the basis for other discussions in
the literature. . . . [It] shows the compatibility of certain claims and the
broader culture.”34 The results of my research claim that there are indeed
certain rabbinic conceptions (and lack of conceptions) concerning the
black African; that these conceptions and perceptions are in agreement
with the antecedent Jewish cultures of the biblical and Hellenistic-Roman
periods, as they are with Near Eastern cultures generally. Not until after
the rabbinic period in the seventh century do these views begin to change.
Cushite/Kushite/Nubian/Ethiopian/Black/Black African
The area south of Egypt descending into central Africa and extending east
to the Red Sea was known to the ancient Near Eastern cultures as Kush.
This is the name found in the Hebrew Bible. In Greek writing the name
for this land was Ethiopia. We also find the name Nubia in the earlier
sources. A more general term for the sub-Saharan inhabitants of Africa is
Black or black African, terms commonly used in Greco-Roman studies. In
this study I use all terms interchangeably as called for by the context. My
preference is to avoid the use of Ethiopia as much as possible because of
the association of the name with the modern nation-state, which is not the
same as the ancient land of Kush. The capitalization of Black is intended
to distinguish individuals whose ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa from
other dark-skinned people. In most translations of the Bible the name Kush
is written with a c: Cush. This is due to the influence of Latin, which acted
as an intermediary between the ancient and modern languages. Today,
however, more and more scholars are writing Kush, which reflects the original spelling of the name in pre-Latin texts. I prefer this for consistency,
since the phoneme k in ancient Near Eastern languages is transliterated
with k and not c. Sometimes (infrequently), to avoid confusion, I will
change Cush to Kush in a quotation.
Israel/Palestine/ The Land of Israel
Due to today’s political climate many scholars are reluctant to use the terminology of previous generations for the name of the Land of Israel in late
antiquity and the rabbinic period. In the past “Palestine” was the term
commonly used but the political connotations of the name today have led
some to avoid it. “Israel” is linguistically the simplest alternative, and some
have adopted the term, but the name is historically problematic since it
14
INTRODUCTION
connotes the State of Israel, which came into existence only some fifty years
ago. “The Land of Israel” (or its Hebrew counterpart “Eretz Israel”) is historically accurate but stylistically cumbersome. The same problem of terminology obtains for the rabbinic composition known as the “Palestinian
Talmud.” Some use the alternative “Jerusalem Talmud,” an accurate translation of the Hebrew title of the work. But “Jerusalem Talmud” never did
become universally accepted, even in the past, for good reason: this Talmud was created primarily in Tiberius. I have not shied away from using
the chronologically inaccurate but reader-friendly “Israel”; nor have I totally avoided the mouthful “Land of Israel.” Nor, when dealing with the
postbiblical period, have I rejected the older usage of “Palestine.”
Translation and Transliteration
Bible translations usually follow one or more of the English versions, as
noted. Translations of other sources are my own unless otherwise stated.
Hebrew transliteration generally follows a popular format, for example,
Hebrew shin is rendered sh and not š, vowel length is not indicated (h am
and not h ām; kush and not kûsh), nor are reduced vowels (shah arut, not
shah arut), nor doubled consonants and initial alef (afriqiyim and not
Hafriqiyyim). But when the discussion moves to philological issues these indications are preserved and a modified system of scientific transliteration
of the consonants is adopted (H, b or v, g, d, h, w, z, h , t, y, k or kh, l, m, n, s,
G, p or f, s, q, r, š, ś, t or th). Arabic transliteration follows standard practice,
and vowel lengthening and doubled consonants are shown. Syriac transliteration generally is shown without vowels. Other languages follow standard rules for those languages. Egyptian and Epigraphic Hebrew do not
indicate vocalization, and when transliterating such texts, depending on
the context, vowels may or may not be supplied: for example, Kš (K ‰š ) or
Kuš for Kush. Spellings of biblical names differ from English Bible translations only in having k and not c represent Hebrew kaf; thus Kush, Sabteka.
Names not generally found in the Bible are transliterated (Yoh anan, not
Johanan), unless the names are commonly found in English, in which case
the familiar spelling is used (Akiba, not gAkiva or Akiva).
ONE
BIBLICAL ISRAEL:
THE LAND OF KUSH
H
OW DID THE ancient Israelites view the black African? Our
main body of evidence for ancient Israel is the Hebrew Bible. Although other evidence is also found, the Hebrew Bible is the main
repository of information for ancient Israel, including its views of the black
African. Indeed, the Bible refers to these people a number of times, which
should not be surprising as they were part of the ancient Near East and
played a role in its history. Of course, before we can say anything about
biblical views of the black African, we must first know when the biblical
text refers to black Africa and its people. This is not as easy as it seems. If
we look at modern translations of the Bible, we often find the terms
“Ethiopia” and “Ethiopian,” which go back to the early Greek and Latin
translations of the original Hebrew. In the Greek- and Latin-speaking
world of antiquity “Ethiopia” meant black Africa. These terms are always
translations of the original Hebrew “Kush” and “Kushi,” but are they correct translations? Do Kush and Kushi in the Hebrew Bible always refer to
“Ethiopia,” that is, black Africa? Our first task, then, will be to determine
when the Bible means black Africa. Once we have done that, we will look
at what the text says and try to determine what attitudes the Israelites had
of this land and its people.
Kush was the Egyptian name (k ‰š ) for the area to the south of Egypt extending deep into East Central Africa. Its border with Egypt ranged from
between the first and second cataracts (waterfalls) of the Nile during the
early Egyptian dynasties down to the fourth cataract in the biblical period.
The name Kush, first found in Egyptian texts from the twentieth century
B.C.E., was taken over into several languages of the ancient Near East, including Babylonian (kūšu), Assyrian (kūsu), Old Persian (kūšā), Old Nubian (kas), and Hebrew (kûš ).1 Some Christian fathers and onomastic lists
give the meaning “darkness” or “blackness” for the name Kush.2 This interpretation seems to go back to Origen, who is apparently dependent on
Philo’s etymology of the name from the Greek word cou`~ ‘dust, dirt’.3 The
name Kush, however, is not Greek, and its etymology therefore cannot be
derived from Greek vocabulary.4 Contrary to what some moderns suggest,5 we do not know the meaning of the name. The Greeks usually called
the area Ethiopia, sometimes Nubia. Between approximately 760 B.C.E.
18
CHAPTER ONE
and 320 C.E., Kush was the center of an empire and civilization, whose capital was first at Napata (near the fourth cataract) and then further south at
Meroe (between the fifth and sixth cataracts). For about the first hundred
years of this period the Kushite kings ruled Egypt and were known as the
twenty-fifth or Ethiopian (or Nubian or Kushite) Dynasty.6
In the Hebrew Bible the term Kush usually designates this area in Africa
south of Egypt including the lands bordering the Red Sea. So, for example, Ezek 29:10 indicates that Kush was geographically situated in an area
south of Egypt, beginning at Syene (i.e., Aswan).7 The same information
is provided by the Greek geographer Strabo (b. 64/63 B.C.E.).8 References
to this African Kush in the Bible are common, especially where Kush is
paired with Egypt (Isa 20:3–4, 43:3, 45:14; Ezek 29:10, 30:4, 9; cf. Dan
11:43; Nah 3:9; Ps 68:32).9 Similarly, the line from Jeremiah (13:23),
“Can the Kushite change his skin?” refers to the dark-skinned Nubian. The
Kushite dynasty of Egypt is referred to a few times in the Bible, most notably in 2 Kgs 19:9 ( Isa 37:9) where Tirhaqa, who reigned as one of the
Kushite pharaohs of Egypt between 690 and 633 B.C.E., is called “King of
Kush.”10
In several instances in the Bible, however, “Kush” seems to refer to a location not in Africa. The Table of Nations in Gen 10:7 (and 1 Chron 1:9)
lists “the descendants of Kush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteka; the descendants of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan.” Are these descendants or locations in Africa, which would seem to be required, if Kush, the
ancestor, is located in Africa? In regard to Seba there are indeed a number
of indications arguing for a location in Africa. Isa 43:3 groups together
Egypt, Kush, and Seba, thus pointing to an African location.11 Isa 45:14
has the same grouping (Egypt, Kush, Sebaites) and characterizes the Sebaites as “tall,” which further points to an African location in view of Isa
18:1–2, “Beyond the rivers of Ethiopia . . . to a people tall and smooth.”12
In addition, Josephus (first century C.E.) and Strabo locate Seba in Africa.13
Consider also the early Christian traditions that identify the queen of Sheba
( Seba) with the queen of Ethiopia, and the onomastic lists that define
Saba, Sabaeans as “Ethiopians.”14 Some scholars have therefore concluded
that Seba is indeed to be located in Africa.15 Despite this, there is general
agreement that the other names of Kush’s descendants (according to some
even Seba) correspond to names of peoples who inhabited areas not in Africa
but in the southern and southwestern parts of the Arabian peninsula.16
This, however, does not necessarily mean that the descendants of Kush
in Arabia and the African Kushites are of different ethnic stock, for historically there was always movement across the Red Sea and the Sinai peninsula between Africa and Arabia.17 The biblical conception informing the
Table of Nations, therefore, that the people on both sides of the Red Sea
THE BIBLICAL LAND OF KUSH
19
were ethnically related and descended from the same Kushite ancestor
probably reflects the historical situation. This relationship between the
peoples on either side of the Red Sea is, incidentally, paralleled in the field
of linguistics, where scholars now see a relationship between the respective
families of languages and refer to a parent family as Afro-Asiatic (formerly
called Hamito-Semitic). “In recent years the feeling has grown in linguistic circles . . . that the linguistic criteria for dividing the Semitic and
Hamitic languages into two distinct blocks do not exist. All these languages
have certain common elements in vocabulary, morphemes and patterns of
grammatical behavior (especially in verb conjugation), which are characteristic of the whole family.”18 Whether original Arabian Kushite tribes
migrated into eastern Africa and gave their name to the land, or African
Kushites migrated into Arabia, in the biblical view the peoples on either
side of the Red Sea were regarded as of the same Kushite stock.19
Today we see the Red Sea as separating two distinct lands, Africa and
Arabia. But in antiquity it was not seen that way. Indeed, in the world of
classical antiquity, from Herodotus to Strabo, the term Arabia included the
area across the Red Sea up until the Nile. It wasn’t the Red Sea but the
Nile that constituted the boundary between Africa and Asia.20 The same
perspective may well lie behind the Palestinian Targums that associate Arabia with Kush in Gen 10:6 and translate “Arabia” for “Kush” in 1 Chr
1:8.21 It may also account for the Septuagint’s refusal to translate Kush in
Gen 10:6–8 as “Ethiopia,” which is its translation everywhere else in the
Hebrew Bible. Only here does the Septuagint simply transliterate the name
of the land as Kush (Couv~). Lastly, note that in Herodotus’s description of
the various ethnic units that composed Xerxes’ army, the Ethiopians and
Arabs are grouped together in one unit under a single commander.22 These
Greek and Roman (and, perhaps, Aramaic) sources point to the same phenomenon as do the ancient Near Eastern sources—that the Red Sea did
not serve as an ethnic boundary and land on both its sides shared the same
name, whether that name was Arabia in the Greek sources or Kush in the
Bible (and perhaps, the Targum). Indeed, according to some Latin sources,
“Ethiopia” extended eastward as far as the Indus.23
In addition to Kush in Africa and South or Southwest Arabia, there is
another people of that name known from the ancient Near East. A group
of nomadic or seminomadic tribes located in the Negev or on the southern border of Israel identified as Kushu (kwšw) is mentioned in Middle
Egyptian execration texts (nineteenth or eighteenth century B.C.E.), and
possibly in other Egyptian sources as well.24 Scholars have variously identified these bedouin people behind some of the biblical references to Kush
or Kushite, such as Zerah the Kushite (2 Chron 14:8–14, 16:8), the
Kushites who were “neighbors of Arabs” (2 Chron 21:16), Kushan in
20
CHAPTER ONE
Habakkuk 3:7,25 and the Kushites in the service of the kings of Judah (2 Sam
18.21ff., Jer 38.7ff.).26 It has also been pointed out that the biblical reference (1 Chron 4:40) to the area of Simeon’s territory near Gedor (or
Gerar) as having been formerly inhabited by descendants of Ham (min
h am), would support the notion of a Kushite people in the northern Negev
at the southern borders of Israel. Simeon’s territory was located in the
southern part of ancient Israel bordering on the Negev.27 The existence of
a Kushite people in this general area and references to it in the Bible have
become well accepted in biblical scholarship.28
Whether these Kushites were related to the African and Southwest Arabian Kushites is not clear. There may have been a Kushite migration to the
southern border area of Judah.29 Or there may have been no ethnic connection at all, and the same name was applied to northern Arabia because
one had to pass through it to get to Kush in Africa or the southern part of
Arabia, just as, for the same reason, the northern region of Arabia was
called Misir or Musri (i.e., Egypt) by the people of western Asia.30
Finally, there is yet one other Kushite people whose echo is found in the
Bible: “Kush also begot Nimrod. . . . The mainstays of his kingdom were
Babylon, Erech, Accad” (Gen 10:8–12). It is unlikely that this Kush, who is
associated with the lands of Mesopotamia, is related to either an African or
an Arabian Kush. Most scholars feel, rather, that the Nimrod Kush is associated with the Kassites (Kaššu/Kuššu in the cuneiform texts, Greek Kossaioi)
of Mesopotamia who overthrew the first Babylonian dynasty in 1595 B.C.E.
and ruled Babylon for the next 450 years.31 During this long period, Babylonia was known as the land of the Kassites. The biblical Kush who “begot
Nimrod” of Mesopotamia is seen as a literary echo of these Kassites.32
In sum, Kush in the Hebrew Bible usually refers to East Africa or Southwest Arabia, sometimes to North Arabia or South Israel, and, at least once,
to Mesopotamia. The early Greek and Latin translations of the Bible do not
distinguish between the different areas, translating them all as “Ethiopia,”
that is, Nubia. Through these translations the name Kush became exclusively identified with Africa.
Descriptions and images of the African Kush, preserved in the Hebrew
Bible, will give us a picture of how the land was perceived by the Jews of
antiquity. In only a few places does the Bible describe aspects of the topography, resources, and geographical location of Nubia. Gen 2:13 refers to a
river called Gih on, “that winds through the whole land of Kush.”33 Some
claim that Gih on is the Egyptian giyon, which is the Amharic name given
to the springs and waterfalls of the Blue Nile.34 Isa 18:2 describes Kush as
“baz Hu by rivers.” Some early versions (Old Greek recensions, Peshit ta,
Vulgate) translate “plundered,” assuming a relationship to the Hebrew
root bzz. A recent attempt connects the word to the Arabic bazza ‘pull
along forcibly’, and renders the Hebrew “wash away.”35 Most modern
THE BIBLICAL LAND OF KUSH
21
translations, however, assume that the word is related to the Syriac bzG ‘to
pierce, cleave’ and translate the verse accordingly, giving the sense of the
rivers dividing the land.36 To his translation “cut through by streams”
Wildberger adds that “everyone who visits the country is impressed by the
way the southern part of Kush is crisscrossed with mighty rivers.”37 Indeed, Isa 18:1 mentions “the region of the rivers of Kush.” The phrase “cut
through by streams,” however, may not be a reference to the crisscrossing
of many rivers but to the division of the land into two by the Nile. This is
precisely how Homer described Ethiopia according to Strabo. Homer referred to the Ethiopians “who dwell sundered in twain,” which Strabo understood as meaning the division of the land by the Nile.38
Job 28:19 indicates that gold and topaz (chrysolite) were among the
natural resources of Kush/Nubia. Pliny parallels this report in regard to
chrysolite, which, he says, Ethiopia exports.39 Regarding gold, there is a
plethora of evidence. Indeed, Upper Egypt and Kush had the richest gold
mines in antiquity and Kush “was principally renowned for its gold production.”40 Gold was a major Kushite import to Egypt during the eighteenth to twentieth Dynasties (1570–1090 B.C.E.) and ancient Egyptian
paintings show captured Kushites bringing gold to the pharaoh.41 Herodotus speaks about the gold wealth of Ethiopia (3.114), and he adds that
prisoners in Ethiopia are bound with fetters made of gold (3.23, cf. 22;
Mela 3.86). Agatharchides of Cnidus (second century B.C.E.) mentions the
“many large gold mines, where gold is extracted in great quantity.”42 If
Sheba is to be located in Africa, the biblical story of the queen of Sheba
bringing gold and precious stones to King Solomon (1 Kgs 10:2, 2 Chr
9:1) may be another indication of the wealth of gold in this area (see also
Ezek 27.22 and Dan 11:43). As late as the first century C.E. we find Pliny
referring to a district in Ethiopia that “produces a large amount of gold”
and Strabo mentioning the gold mines of Meroe in Ethiopia.43 It should
also be noted that the name “Nubia,” first attested in Eratosthenes in the
third century B.C.E., may derive from the Egyptian word for gold, nbw —
that is, Nubia is the Land of Gold.44
One enigmatic passage in the Bible may also point to a Nubian natural
resource, although it is not clear what that resource is. Apparently describing those who will recognize God and come to worship him, Ps
68:32/31 states that “h ashmanim will come out of Egypt; Kush shall
stretch out its hands to God.”45 The difficult Hebrew word, which occurs
but once in the Hebrew Bible, has been translated as meaning either princes,
nobles, envoys, or some sort of rich tribute (or those who bring tribute),
such as bronze vessels, red cloth, or blue-green wool.46 Although the
h ashmanim are said to derive from Egypt, not Kush, the parallelism of the
two names would indicate an association between them, most probably
placing the psalm at the time of the Nubian dynasty of Egypt.
22
CHAPTER ONE
The one perception of the land of Kush that has been very influential in
subsequent depictions of Kush and its inhabitants is found in Amos 9:7.
This verse has also been subject to, not coincidentally, serious misinterpretation. Certainly for this study, which attempts to examine ancient Israelite
and Jewish attitudes toward the Kushites, a verse that states “Are you not
like the Kushites to me, O Israelites?” takes on added significance.
What does Amos mean by this comparison? A common interpretation
by Bible scholars until recent times claimed that the prophet meant to denigrate Israel. Just as the dark-skinned Kushites were held in contempt, so
too were the Israelites. Take William R. Harper for example: “Israel, says
the prophet, is no more to me than the far distant, uncivilized, and despised
black race of the Ethiopians.”47 How did Harper know that the Ethiopians were despised? “Their color and the fact that slaves were so often drawn
from them added to the grounds for despising them.”48 S. R. Driver can
serve as another example: “The Kushites, or Ethiopians, are mentioned as
a distant people, far removed from the grace and knowledge of God, despised on account of their dark colour (cf. Jer 13:23), and perhaps also on
account of slaves being often drawn from them. Degenerate Israel is no
more in Jehovah’s eyes than these despised Kushites.”49 There is, however,
no evidence from the ancient Near East in general or ancient Israel in particular that Ethiopians were “despised on account of their dark color. . . .
There is, of course, no slightest suggestion that the colour of their skin is
the point at issue; there is no warrant anywhere in the Bible for that kind
of idea.”50 Nor is there any warrant anywhere in the Bible that black Africa
provided a disproportionate number of slaves in the ancient Near East or
that black Africans were known to the Israelites “mostly as slaves.”51 It appears rather that Harper and Driver and others like them were interpolating the assumptions and prejudices of their time into the biblical text.
“[The] statement reflects Driver’s own attitude rather than that of Amos
. . . or the ancient Israelites.”52
Harper and Driver were not the first to express these views. The negative interpretation of Amos 9:7 has a old pedigree. Two hundred years before them the Puritan Bible scholar Matthew Poole (d. 1679) explained
the word “Ethiopian” in the text this way: “i.e. most vile and ignoble,” an
explanation that ultimately goes back to early Christian exegesis.53 For example, Augustine’s (d. 430) explanation of “Ethiopians” in Ps 72/71:9 as
“the remotest and foulest of mankind” couples geographic and moral distance.54 This kind of interpretation became so well established that even
the scholar of Ethiopia in antiquity, Edward Ullendorff, accepted it.55
Probably the most egregious examples of such an interpretation are those
involving Bible instruction for the religious. Driver’s work was part of a series called The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. Unfortunately, even
in recent times we can find similar cases. In 1979 the American Bible
THE BIBLICAL LAND OF KUSH
23
Society published A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Amos, which explains our verse by virtue of the fact that the Ethiopians are a “despised
people.”56
However, another interpretation is gaining ground among scholars of
the Hebrew Bible today and appears dominant: the purpose of the verse is
to reject the belief that Israel has a special status before God; the Israelites
are just like any other people. The Kushim/Ethiopians are specifically mentioned as representative of the other nations because of their remote distance. “Are you not like the Kushites to me, O Israelites” proclaims, in
other words, that the Israelites are no more special to God than the most
remote people on the face of the earth. “Even the most inaccessible nation
is still under God’s surveillance and sovereignty, as is Israel.”57 This interpretation has much in its favor.
The idea that the Ethiopians, that is, the black Africans, are the most remote peoples in the world is commonly found in classical sources, as in
Homer’s description of them as “the farthermost of men” (e[scatoi ajndrw`n).58 The very term “Ethiopian” in ancient Greek sources, came to designate the remote southern peoples, just as “Scythian” came to designate
the remote northern peoples.59 These designations underlie a common
topos in the classical world, that is, the use of a Scythian-Ethiopian pairing
as a way to refer to the geographical extremes of the inhabited world. The
topos is most frequently found in the widespread environmental theory of
anthropological differentiation. The extremes of weather and environment
in the remote north and south provided the explanation for different racial
traits, including skin color. Since the peoples in the far north and far south
were the lightest- and darkest-skinned people known to the Greeks and
Romans, the Scythian-Ethiopian pairing came to be used to designate anthropological and racial, as well as geographical, extremes.60 Sometimes
other northern peoples (Thracians, Gauls, Saxons, Germans) were substituted, or “Egyptian” replaced “Ethiopian,” but in general the Scythians
and Ethiopians became the formulaic expression of racial extremes in the
Greco-Roman world.61 “The Ethiopian-Scythian formula had appeared as
early as Hesiod and had become a frequent, if not the favorite, Hellenic illustration of the boundaries of the north and south as well as of the environment theory.”62 Thus from the earliest days of Greek literature, that is,
as early as the eighth century B.C.E., the Kushim/Ethiopians were considered to be the most remote (southern) people on the face of the earth. It
should not be too surprising that the same idea circulated in the eastern
Mediterranean, in Israel, at the same time. The prophet Amos and the poet
Homer are both said to have lived in the eighth century.
It would seem that this connotation of remoteness, which so defined the
Ethiopians in the ancient world, underlies Amos 9:7. Not only do the classical sources support this interpretation, but so do some ancient Near East-
24
CHAPTER ONE
ern and biblical sources, in which Kush indicates the ends of the earth. The
Assyrian usage of the name Meluhha to mean Ethiopia, according to the
˘ ˘ Ethiopia was thought to be the most
regnant view, is due to the fact that
63
remote land. An Aramaic text in demotic script dating from the fourth
century B.C.E. pairs Ethiopia and Elam to indicate “the ends of the known
world.”64 Apparently the combination of Syria-Palestine (Kh ‰rw) and
Kush have the same meaning in a fourteenth-century B.C.E. Egyptian text,
the Hymn to Aton.65 The Persian king Darius describes the extent of his
empire by reference to its geographic extremes in the north, south, east,
and west: “Saith Darius the King: This is the kingdom which I hold, from
the Scythians who are beyond Sogdiana, thence unto Ethiopia (Kāš ū);
from India (Hidauv), thence unto Sardis.”66 This inscription, of course, is
reminiscent of a similar formula found in the biblical book of Esther (1:1),
“from India (Hodu) to Ethiopia (Kush),” indicating the great extent of
Ahasueres’ kingdom of Persia.67 It would appear that the connotation of
remoteness also underlies the choice of Kush in Zephaniah’s prophecy
against the nations (2:12), thus indicating God’s universal reach to the
most remote parts of the world.68 Similarly the names of “Egypt, Kush,
and Seba” in Isa 43:3 and 45:14 were “probably chosen because they represent the most remote regions known to Israelites.”69 Apparently the
same may be said for Ps 68:32/31, “Kush shall stretch out her hands to
God.” By the choice of Kush in this verse, the psalmist indicates that those
from the farthest reaches of the world will come to know God. Compare
also the NJPS translation of Isa 18:1–2, “Ah, land . . . beyond the rivers of
Nubia! Go, swift messengers, to a nation far and remote, to a people thrust
forth and away.”
This ancient view of the geography of the inhabited world probably also
explains the two references to Ethiopians found in the Greek and Latin versions of Psalms but not in the Hebrew original. Psalm 72/71, “a prayer of
David son of Jesse” concerning Solomon, entreats God that “the king” be
endowed with righteousness, that he may champion the lowly, the poor
and the needy who cry out. Verses 8–11 ask that the king be powerful and
rule over a great empire:
Let him rule from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.
Let desert dwellers kneel before him, and his enemies lick the dust.
Let kings of Tarshish and the island pay tribute, kings of Sheba and Seba
offer gifts.
Let all kings bow to him, and all nations serve him.
Where the Hebrew has “desert dwellers” (siyyim) the Greek texts of the
Septuagint, Aquila, and Symmachus, as well as the Vulgate have “Ethiopians” (Aithiopes).70 Substitution of “Ethiopian” for “desert dweller” is a
natural interpretation of the difficult Hebrew word because these verses
THE BIBLICAL LAND OF KUSH
25
describe the “ends of the earth” from where all kings will come and pay
tribute to the king of Israel. Furthermore, the combination of Kush, Seba,
and Sheba occurs elsewhere in the Bible (Isa 43:3 and 45:14), as noted earlier.71 The substitution of “Ethiopians” for “desert dwellers” having been
made, it was then automatically made again two chapters later for the same
difficult Hebrew word (siyyim) in Ps 74/73:14, where we find Aithiopes
once again in the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and other versions.72
The belief that Kush is found at end of the earth lies behind the choice
of an Ethiopian as the first gentile convert to Christianity (Acts 8:26–40).
Nothing could more visibly indicate the universalist posture of the early
church than the conversion of those from the most remote parts of the
world. Indeed, Philip’s conversion of the Ethiopian became a symbol of
Christianity’s conversion of the world, and in Christian metaphor (beginning with Origen in the third century) the “Ethiopian” became the symbol for the church of the gentiles. As Augustine said explaining “Ethiopians” in Ps 72/71:9, “By the Ethiopians, as by a part the whole, He signifies
all nations, selecting that nation to mention especially by name, which is at
the ends of the earth.” And Augustine explained that the same interpretation is to be given also to our verse in Ps 68:32/31, “Ethiopia, which seems
to be the utmost limit of the gentiles.”73 Given the evidence from classical, ancient Near Eastern, and biblical sources, it appears quite certain that
the connotation of Ethiopians/Kushites as being the most remote southern peoples on the face of the earth is the key to Amos 9:7.74
In summary, biblical references to the place Kush or the people Kushites,
usually mean Nubia/Ethiopia and its inhabitants, including the territory
and people on the (south or southwestern) Arabian side of the Red Sea,
but may on occasion refer to the Semitic Kushu on the southern borders
of Israel in the Negev and the North Arabian desert. In addition, the Kush
who is the father of Nimrod is to be associated with the Mesopotamian
Kassites. Whether or not the biblical author in compiling the genealogy of
Kush in Genesis 10 “sought dexterously to explain” the existence of different peoples or geographical entities sharing the same name, it appears
that the biblical references to Kush do not all indicate the same people or
land.75 The Bible knows that African Kush is “sundered in twain” by the
Nile (and/or it is crisscrossed by a multitude of rivers); that it is a rich
source of gold and topaz; and, most important, that it is the land at the
furthest southern reach of the earth. The image of Kush as being at the end
of the earth, we shall see, has important ramifications for the image of the
black African that develops in the postbiblical period.
TWO
BIBLICAL ISRAEL:
THE PEOPLE OF KUSH
N
OW THAT WE have determined when the Bible refers to Nubia/
Kush, what the ancient Israelites knew about the land, and how
they perceived it, we can begin our investigation into the biblical
views of, and attitudes toward, the people of that land. Kushites are mentioned in a number of places in the Hebrew Bible, but we cannot, of course,
restrict our investigation to the Bible. Ancient Israel’s attitudes and perceptions must be located within the larger ancient Near Eastern context,
of which it was part. In addition, as we saw in the last chapter, GrecoRoman perceptions of the Black can also help illuminate contemporaneous
Jewish perceptions.
Numbers 12:1
One of the most interesting Kushite passages in the Bible is the reference
to Moses’ wife. Much has been written against and in favor of Blacks based
on this passage. Some have seen this biblical event as the first recorded instance of racism; others, as a divine declaration for a color-blind brotherhood; yet others, as both; and still others, as neither.
Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite woman whom
he had married (for [ki] he had indeed married a Kushite woman); and they
said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through
us also?” (Num 12:1–2; NRSV)
The translation given, that of NRSV (similarly RSV and NEB), presumes that
the clause “for he had indeed married a Kushite woman” is the narrator’s
parenthetical remark providing the reader with necessary background information.1 As the medieval Jewish exegete Bekhor Shor (twelfth century) said:
“Since nowhere were we told that Moses had married a Kushite, Scripture
tells us ‘for indeed he had married a Kushite.’”2 This translation is commonly
found in modern as well as medieval biblical commentators.3 Other translations are, however, possible. NJPS, based on Ibn Ezra’s (d. 1164) statement
that ki introduces direct discourse, translates: “Miriam and Aaron spoke
against Moses because of the Kushite woman he had married: ‘He married
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
woman.’”4
27
a Kushite
It is also possible to interpret ki as indicating indirect
discourse: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite
woman he had married, that he had married a Kushite woman.”5
Whether we understand the ki clause as explanatory, as direct discourse,
or as indirect discourse, the complaint against Moses was that he had married a Kushite woman. Who was this woman and what was the reason for
the complaint? Until recently biblical scholars had commonly understood
“Kushite” in this verse to refer to the African Kushites. This understanding is not surprising. After all, that is the common biblical meaning of the
name, and it has been enshrined in Bible translations since the Septuagint’s
“Ethiopian” rendering of Num 12:1 over two thousand years ago. What is
somewhat surprising, however, is the degree to which scholars—biblical
and otherwise—have read their modern day assumptions and prejudices
into the biblical text. Thus many have understood this incident in the Bible
as an ancient example of racism, for it shows Aaron and Miriam’s disapproval of Moses’ marriage to a Black.6 Or, if Moses’ wife is not actually
Black, Aaron and Miriam mean to insult her by characterizing her as one.7
Even more surprising is how some scholars have assumed that because
Moses’ wife was a black African (as they think), she was therefore a slave.
In Hastings’s well-respected Dictionary of the Bible (1911), D. S. Margoliouth remarked that the reason for Miriam and Aaron’s objection to
Moses’ marriage is that the woman he married was a “black slave-girl.”8
Ullendorff, who wrote a book on Ethiopia and the Bible, also speaks of
“the obvious interpretation that Moses had married an Ethiopian slavegirl.”9 The Bible, however, says nothing of the Kushite being a slave.
Many scholars became convinced of the Black or racist interpretation of
Numbers because of the punishment of leprosy God inflicted on Miriam for
speaking against her brother Moses (Num 12:10). The “snow-white” leprosy is seen as an apt response to a racist slur about a black African. This is
a common interpretation of Miriam’s affliction, which is found in writings
by both Blacks and non-Blacks, whether theologically or scholarly based,
over many years.10 Biblicists, however, now generally agree that the Hebrew term (saraGat) used to describe the punishment of Moses’ sister is not
leprosy, nor is it a category of diseases that includes leprosy. It is doubtful
that leprosy even existed in the ancient Near East at the time of the Hebrew
Bible. The evidence presented by the Bible indicates rather that saraGat is a
disease or group of diseases that exhibit a flaking or exfoliation of the skin,
symptoms that are common to several skin diseases (psoriasis, eczema, seborrhea, etc.). The biblical description of the disease in our passage and in
others (Ex 4:6, Num 12:10, 2 Kgs 5:27) as “like snow” does not refer to
the color of the disease but to its characteristic flakiness. The adjective
“white” that accompanies the “like snow” description in various translations
is not in the original Hebrew text.11 The passage in Numbers actually pro-
28
CHAPTER TWO
vides evidence of a nonwhite color of the disease, as well as its flaky characteristic, for it describes the condition as similar to a “dead [fetus] when it
comes out of its mother’s womb.” The color of a fetus that has died in the
womb is reddish, which turns brown-gray after a few days out of the womb.
As for its flaky condition, a dead fetus in utero sheds its skin in large sheets.12
Finally, even if saraGat did mean “snow-white” leprosy, why should that
punishment be an apt response to a racist slur against black Africans? The
disease is found in the Hebrew Bible as God’s punishment for different
sorts of sins, none of which have anything to do with Blacks. Joab and his
descendants are cursed with it for the crime of murder (2 Sam 3:29); Gehazi is afflicted with it for acting deceitfully (2 Kgs 5); King Azariah, for
not removing the high places (2 Kgs 15:5); and King Uzziah for improperly offering incense in the temple (2 Chr 26:16–21).
In short, the interpretation of Num 12:1 that sees Miriam and Aaron
deprecating black Africans is a product of modern assumptions read back
into the Bible. Looking at the biblical sources without the skewing prism
of postbiblical history provides no such reading of the text. There is no evidence here that biblical Israel saw black Africans in a negative light.
What then was the complaint against Moses, and who was the Kushite
whom he had married? As we saw in the previous chapter, there was a people, or group of people, inhabiting the Negev and northern Arabia, known
as Kushites. Now the prophet Habakkuk parallels Kushan with Midian:
“The tents of Kushan . . . the dwellings of Midian” (Hab 3:7). Because
Midian is located in the same general area as these Negev or North-Arabian
Kushites, that is, northwest Arabia, and because the name Kushan is a
lengthened form of Kush, scholars have therefore concluded that there is
some historical connection between Kush(an) and Midian.13 It is generally thought that the Arabian Kushites assimilated among the Midianites,
just as the Midianites later assimilated among the Ishmaelites, and the Ishmaelites among the Arabs. Thus, Kush(an) is the ancient name of Midian
or the name of a tribe that had close ties to Midian.14
This identity of the Arabian Kush with Midian is the key to understanding
the passage in Numbers that speaks of Moses’ Kushite wife. According to the
earlier biblical narrative, Moses indeed had a wife, Zipporah, who was a Midianite (Ex 2:21). When the Bible says, therefore, that Moses had a Kushite
wife, it is referring to the same Midianite wife Zipporah, but is using the ancient name of her people. “The Kushite” of Num 12:1 is just another name
for the “the Midianite.” The identity of the names is found in Christian
sources as early as the fifth century and in Jewish sources of the Hellenistic
period and the later Middle Ages.15 It has become very well accepted among
modern-day biblicists.16
If the translations of RSV, NRSV, and NEB (“for he had indeed married
a Kushite woman”) are correct, it would imply that at the time of the com-
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
29
position of these verses in Numbers, this ancient name for Midian was no
longer so well known, and the biblical author therefore interjects the parenthetical remark, “for he had indeed married a Kushite woman.” If the
direct discourse (Ibn Ezra and NJPS) or the indirect discourse translation
is correct, I argue that the identification of Kush(an) with Midian may still
have been known, and therefore occasioned no biblical explanation. In any
case, the identification of Kush(an) with Midian allows the biblical narrative to make sense on its own terms and does not force us to posit events
not provided by the narrative, that is, a second marriage by Moses.
Whether we understand “Kushite” in Num 12:1 as another name for
Midianite or whether we understand the word to mean Ethiopian, the
point of Miriam and Aaron’s complaint was that Moses had taken a nonIsraelite wife. In having God punish Miriam for arguing against the marriage, the Bible implicitly acknowledges the acceptability of foreign marriage.17 The story of Moses’ marriage to the Kushite, then, is neither the
first recorded instance of racism nor a divine declaration for a color-blind
brotherhood. Still less is it both of these. Whether the Kushite is a black
African or not, color is not the issue of concern in the text.
Isaiah 18:1–2 (18:7)
A passage in Isaiah (18:1–2; repeated in verse 7) describes one aspect of
the land of Kush and several characteristics of the Kushites. In fact, these
two verses contain the Bible’s most detailed description of the black
African. While the passage, however, is reasonably clear regarding its description of the land of Kush, as we saw in the previous chapter, its description of the people of Kush is full of linguistic problems and has been
the subject of a multitude of different interpretations. By way of illustration, to its translation of these two verses ICC (G. B. Gray) inserts six question marks, and even the more recent NJPS version provides an alternate
translation to one line and admits “meaning of Hebrew uncertain” to two
others. A sense of the difficulties may be gained by looking at two different recent translations, those of the Continental Commentaries series (H.
Wildberger) and the New Jewish Publication Society.
Ha! The land of the winged boats
[which is situated] in the region
of the rivers of Kush,
which sends envoys on the river,
and [in] papyrus canoes on the water.
Go, you nimble messengers,
to a tall, smooth nation,
Ah, land in the deep shadow of wings,
Beyond the rivers of Nubia!
Go, swift messengers,
To a nation far and remote,
To a people thrust forth and away—
A nation of gibber and chatter—
Whose land is cut off by streams;
30
CHAPTER TWO
to a people feared far and wide,
to a nation, which tramples down
with muscle power,
whose land is cut through by streams.
(CC)18
Which sends out envoys by sea,
In papyrus vessels upon the water!
(NJPS)
The historical context of these verses is an attempt by Kush-Egypt and
Judah to join forces in an alliance against Assyria.19 At this time Egypt was
ruled by the Kushite or twenty-fifth Dynasty, which had sent emissaries to
Judah to discuss the possible alliance. Isa 20:5–6 also refers to attempts
(either Judahite or Philistine) to make alliance with “Kush, their hope”
against Assyria. In Isaiah 18 the prophet sends the delegation back to its
own country with the message that it is not the right time for political alliances and military action against Assyria. In the first two verses Isaiah describes the land and the people who would make alliance with Judah.20
LAND OF THE WINGED BOATS / LAND IN THE DEEP SHADOW OF WINGS;
HEBREW S ILS EL KENAFAYIM.
The second Hebrew word, kenafayim ‘wings’, presents little problem. The
difficulty is with the word silsel, which has generally received one of four
interpretations by moderns: the word is related to Arabic salla, salsala ‘to
whir, to rattle’; it is equated with srsr ‘a locustlike creature’; it derives from
sl ‘shadow’; or silsel ‘ship, boat’. Together with kenafayim ‘wings’, these
interpretations inform most translations, ancient and modern. So we have
“whirring wings” (RSV, NRSV), “buzzing insects” and “whirring locusts”
(NAB and NJB); “deep shadow of wings” or “a most sheltered land”
(NJPS, similarly KJV), following LXX and Targums; and “winged boats,”
meaning either sailboats or speedy boats found in REB and some modern
commentaries.21 Although the Hebrew kenafayim has generally not been
the subject of dispute, this word too has not entirely escaped debate. A recent interpretation understands the word in the sense of “side,” one meaning it has in Hebrew, and translates the phrase “land of shadows on both
sides”—that is, “near the equator, shadows fall on one side of an object
during the summer and on the other during the winter.”22
It seems to me that a translation “whirring of wings,” or something similar, is most likely correct. Not only is there an Arabic cognate to silsel, as
indicated earlier, but the word itself, although not found in Biblical Hebrew, is found in Tannaitic Hebrew as a reduplicated form of sll ‘to resonate, ring, tremble’.23 Although this translation has an ancient tradition,
being found in the Greek translation of Symmachus, and has been incorporated in RSV and NRSV, it has not become universally accepted.24 A
new find, however, may support the translation and help to explain its
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
31
meaning. A hieroglyphic stela dating from the end of the twenty-fifth
(Kushite) Dynasty in Egypt was found in 1977 along a desert road in
Egypt. The stela, dated to the years before the conflict with Assyria (i.e.,
just at the time when Isaiah gave his message recorded in Isaiah 18), describes the army of the Kushite king, Tirhaqa (690–664 B.C.E.): “[(The
army) is coming] like the coming of the wind, like falcons flapping the wings
with [their] wings.”25 The description “like falcons flapping the wings”
may well be the intended meaning of Isaiah’s silsel kenafayim, that is,
“whirring of wings.”26 It is not clear from the inscription precisely what
action of the army is being compared with the flapping of falcons’ wings,
but it may be a reference to the Kushites’ legendary running speed, to
which Isaiah next refers. As Heliodorus (fourth century C.E.) said of the
Ethiopian Trog(l)odytes, “Their swift feet carry them like wings.”27
GO, YOU NIMBLE MESSENGERS / GO, SWIFT MESSENGERS;
HEBREW MALHAKHIM QALIM.
The Kushite messengers are characterized by their speed, an attribute of
the ancient Ethiopians noted also in Egyptian and Greek texts. The stela
of Tirhaqa, mentioned earlier, indicates that Kushites were known for their
running ability. The inscription describes how Tirhaqa had commanded
that his army run every day and how the king had gone out “to observe
the running of his army”: “When the person of the king is on the way to
the camp (bj3) to see the beauty of his army, [(The army) is coming] like the
coming of the wind, like falcons flapping the wings with [their] wings.” It
further describes how the army ran the fifty kilometer distance, from Memphis to the Fayum, in five hours, and how it was rewarded by the king.28
Herodotus (fifth century B.C.E.) says that the “Ethiopian Troglodytes
[cave-dwellers] are swifter of foot than any men of whom tales are brought
to us,” and Pliny quotes Crates of Pergamum (second century B.C.E.) as
saying that “the Trogodytes beyond Ethiopia are swifter than horses.”29
Heliodorus, a few centuries later, speaks about these same people saying
that “they have from nature the gift of running swiftly, which they train
from childhood.”30 Given these attestations of Kushite speed, it may not
be coincidental that Joab, David’s commander in chief (tenth century
B.C.E.), employed a Kushite runner (2 Sam 18:21–23).
TO A TALL, SMOOTH NATION / TO A PEOPLE THRUST FORTH AND AWAY;
HEBREW MEMUŠAKH U-MORAT.
The first Hebrew word is apparently a passive participle of the root mšk ‘to
draw’, but it is not clear what sense the word has. Some would see it as a
reference to the famed Kushite ability with the bow, that is, “drawing [the
32
CHAPTER TWO
bow],” a sense the word has elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.31 Others, such
as RSV, NRSV, and REB, prefer “tall” (i.e., drawn out), a translation that
is supported by the remarks of several classical authors about the Ethiopians’ height. Herodotus’s remark that the Ethiopians are said to be the
tallest people in the world is often mentioned.32 This depiction is echoed
by Pseudo-Scylax in his Periplus (fourth cent B.C.E.).33 And the remark in
the Periplus Maris Erythraei (first–second century C.E.) that the inhabitants of the East African coast near Zanzibar are “big of body” (mevgistoi de;
ejn swvmasin), an expression that refers to stature, reminds one of Isaiah’s
(45:14) comment about “Egypt’s wealth and Nubia’s gains and Sabaeans,
men of stature” (yegiaGmisrayim u-seh ar kush u-sevaHim anshe midah).34 Although Pliny’s description of the Ethiopian Syrobotae as being about
twelve feet tall is fantastic, as is Diodorus of Sicily’s (first century B.C.E.) reference to the height (about ten feet) of those people south of Ethiopia near
the equator, both writers clearly reflect reports of very tall Ethiopians.35 Notice of the height of some East Africans is not restricted to the ancients. Medieval Muslim writers often noted this feature, as did some moderns.36 Given
this evidence, it would seem that the LXX translation of memušakh in Isa
18:2 by the word metevwron (lit. “raised up”) captures the same sense of
height.37
With the second word, morat ‘smooth’ or ‘burnished, polished’, some
think that Isaiah was referring to the appearance of the Kushites’ skin after
it has been rubbed with oil, “which would have been especially eye-catching
when seen on the dark skin of the Kushites.”38 This interpretation may
perhaps be supported by observations made by ancients as well as moderns. Herodotus (3.23; cf. Mela 3.88) noted that the Ethiopians have shining skin, and the anthropologist Dominique Zahan described the body care
practiced by men in some black African societies this way: “Great emphasis
is placed on the smoothness and brilliance of the skin. Its luster and sheen
are a sign of vigor and good health. Plant and animal fats are used to contribute to this exaltation of the skin and black colour. Often people use the
remains of gravy fat on their fingers to grease their thighs and legs.”39 Other
scholars understand the Hebrew word to have the same meaning that the
Semitic root mrt has in cognate languages: “to pull out hair, to depilate,” a
meaning that is commonly found in the Hebrew Bible and which is given to
our passage by a number of biblicists.40 If this is the meaning, we may point
to the notice of Diodorus of Sicily that those near the equator “have absolutely no hair on any part of their bodies except on the head, eyebrows and
eyelids, and on the chin,” a report echoed much later by the Arabic geographer Dimashqı̄ (d. 1327), who wrote that the black African “Zanj, the
Sūdān, the H
abasha and Nūba and the like” are “hairless and smooth.”41
These writers describe a characteristic of black Africans that has been noted
by scientists—that Negroids tend to have less body hair than Caucasoids.42
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
33
These two possible descriptions of the Kushites as being “hairless” or
“oiled” are not mutually exclusive and Isaiah may have had both ideas in
mind when he said that the Kushites are morat, that is, “smooth” and “burnished.” Such an appearance may have made a favorable impression on the
ancient Israelites. “There is no reason why the Hebrews should not have
admired the burnished copper colour of the Ethiopians.”43 “Isaiah would
seem to have been struck by the fine physique of the ambassadors.”44 Several biblical scholars have suggested that this may have been what Herodotus (3.20) had in mind when he described the Ethiopians as the bestlooking people in the world.45 If this is Herodotus’s meaning, then his
statement “The Ethiopians are said to be the tallest and best-looking
(mevgistoi kai; kavllistoi) of all people” would parallel two of the Kushite
features (memušakh u-morat) noted by Isaiah.46
Wildberger’s translation “to a tall, smooth nation,” then, not only makes
philological sense but is supported by extrabiblical evidence. On the other
hand, the NJPS translation “to a people thrust forth and away” understands both Hebrew words memušakh and morat to be saying the same
thing and to be referring to the distant land of the African envoys. This
translation is apparently based on the work of H. L. Ginsberg, who translates “distant (in space) and thrust away,” noting the meaning of “distant
in time” for nimšakh in Isa 13:22 and Ezek 12:25 and 28, and “thrust
away” for morat, as derived from yrt, drawing attention to Job 16:11 and
the Arabic wrt.47 This translation has not found acceptance among biblical scholars today.
TO A PEOPLE FEARED FAR AND WIDE / TO A NATION FAR AND REMOTE;
HEBREW EL GAM NORAH MIN HU H WAHAL HAH.
“The invasions into Egypt, which led to the Twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) Dynasty seizing control over the land, would undoubtedly have brought with
it a respect for Cush from the surrounding countries that was commensurate with its power.”48 Not only this, but once Kush controlled Egypt
it exhibited an aggressive geopolitical thrust northward. Among other
events, in 701 B.C.E. Kush battled the Assyrian king Sennacherib to a standstill and a few years later engaged in military campaigns in Asia Minor. “The
awareness of the strength and fighting potential of the Kushites which appears suddenly in the Bible (Isa 18:1, Jer 46:9, Ezek 38:5, [Isa 37:9 2
Kgs 19:9, Isa 45:14]) dates from these halcyon days of the 25th Dynasty
dominion.”49
No doubt the Kushites’ dominion over Egypt and their subsequent military activities brought in its wake a reputation of the Kushites as a power
to be reckoned with, but Kushite fighting ability was respected even before
the period of the twenty-fifth Dynasty. Egyptian literature and art from the
34
CHAPTER TWO
Middle Kingdom (ca. 2133–1786 B.C.E.) onward reflect a view of the
Kushites as a powerful force in resisting Egyptian intervention into their
land. “Nubia as a military power on the periphery of the Mediterranean
world was by far the most prominent feature of the ancient profile of
blacks.”50 And Egyptians had a long history of recruiting Kushites as mercenaries from the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2258–2040 B.C.E.) down
to the Hellenistic period.51 We find Kushites as mercenaries in the service
of the Egyptian army in Canaan in the fourteenth and the tenth centuries
B.C.E. The same is true after the period of the twenty-fifth Dynasty in the
sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E.52 There were Kushite contingents also in
the Persian army of Xerxes.53
One aspect of the Ethiopians’ military prowess was particularly well
known in the ancient world—their skill with the bow. Herodotus (3.21)
tells the story of how the Ethiopian king defied the Persian king Cambyses, who had conquered Egypt and was preparing to invade Ethiopia. He
sent Cambyses an Ethiopian bow with the message that when the Persians
could draw the bow as easily as he does, then they might stand a chance
against the Ethiopians (and even then only with overwhelming odds); until
then they should thank the gods that the Ethiopians do not have it in mind
to attack the Persians. These bows must have been very large, for Herodotus (7.69) describes them as being four cubits long—about six feet—and
Strabo (first century C.E.), who also gives this measurement (17.2.3), says
that they were used for hunting elephants with two men holding the bow
and the third drawing the arrow (16.4.10).54 It wasn’t only the size—and
thus the power—of the bow that gained a reputation in the Greco-Roman
world; it was also the accuracy of the Ethiopian aim. Pliny describes the
“Ethiopian coast-tribes, the Nisicathae and Nisitae, names that mean ‘men
with three’ or ‘with four eyes’—not because they really are like that but because they have a particularly keen sight in using arrows,” and he says that
the Ethiopians are famous among all peoples for their archers.55 Heliodorus later reports that the Ethiopians were able to hit their target right
in the eye, an echo of which is found in the later Arabic term for their Nubian opponents as “pupil smiters.”56 Strabo (16.4.9) refers to another
Ethiopian people who “have the custom of setting up a contest in archery
for boys who have not yet reached manhood.” These literary references
have now been confirmed by iconographic evidence. A group of forty
wooden figurines representing a troop of Nubian archers was recovered
from an Egyptian tomb dated about 2000 B.C.E.57 And these figures are
only the most dramatic representation of Nubian archers, for the depiction
of Nubians with bows (and arrows at times) is very common in Egyptian
iconography.58 One of the Egyptian names for the land to the south, TaSety (t3-stj) Land of the Bow, may even derive from this famed ability.59 It
is interesting that this characteristic of the Kushites has continued into rel-
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
35
atively modern times. In 1790 James Bruce wrote about the Shankella at
the lower end of the Blue Nile that “they are all archers from their infancy.
Their bows are all made of wild fennel thicker than the common proportion, and about seven feet long.”60
It is possible that the Kushites’ fame as archers is reflected in two biblical verses. In a description of the foreign contingents in the Egyptian army
at the battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C.E., Jer 46:9 says: “Let the warriors
go forth, Kush and Put who grasp the shield. And the Ludim who grasp
and draw the bow.” Isa 66:19 may also have a reference to Put and Lud.
Although the Hebrew reads “From them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud—which draw the bow,” several scholars,
on the basis of the reading “Put” (Foud) in the LXX, as well as the association of Lud and Put elsewhere (Ezek 27:10, 30:5), would see an original
“Put” rather than “Pul.”61 In any case, the Ludim are said to be practiced
with the bow. Who are the Ludim? An ancient people by that name inhabited Asia Minor, and some earlier scholarship believed that Jeremiah
and Isaiah have these people in mind.62 However, because Lud is grouped
with Kush in Jer 46:9 and Ezek 30:5 and because Put, whether it is to be
identified with modern Somalia or Libya, is in Africa, most scholars today
agree that Lud too is in Africa.63 And just as the bows, so too the shields
of the Kushites must have made an impression. Apparently their striking
feature was also their size.64 Similarly, Strabo (17.1.54) mentions the
Ethiopians’ long oblong shields.65
The NJPS translation “to a nation far and remote” is that of H. L. Ginsberg, who refers to Ibn Janah and the Arabic waraHa ‘to repel’.66 However,
Ibn Janah provides no support for his explanation except for the context
in both Isa 18:2 and 21:1. This translation has not found acceptance
among biblical scholars today.
TO A NATION, WHICH TRAMPLES DOWN WITH MUSCLE POWER /
A NATION OF GIBBER AND CHATTER; HEBREW GOY QAW-QAW U-MEBUSAH.
The main problem in this line is the Hebrew word qaw-qaw, which occurs
in the Bible only here (and repeated in Isa 18:7). The translation “a nation
which tramples down with muscle power” understands the word as meaning “sinewy muscle power” on the basis of the Arabic quwwa ‘strength,
power’ and qawiya ‘stretched tight, be strong’.67 So also J. Blenkinsopp’s
new translation in the Anchor Bible series: “a nation strong and conquering.”68 Note Mela’s (first century C.E.) remark, ultimately deriving from
Herodotus, that the Ethiopians are admirers of bodily strength and that
their custom is to choose their leader partly on the basis of his strength.69
The NJPS translation, “a nation of gibber and chatter,” on the other hand,
sees qaw-qaw as semantically similar to the Greek barbar, which is tradi-
36
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tionally understood as deriving from the sound of foreign and unintelligible speech on the ears of the Greeks who coined the word. The nonsensical repetition of the syllable was meant to mimic the sound of incomprehensible foreign speech. The same linguistic phenomenon is seen to be
behind Isaiah’s qaw-qaw.70
Another translation is possible, which is based on the meaning of Biblical Hebrew qaw or qāw ‘measuring line’ or (possibly) ‘measure’.71 Some
commentaries and translations have thus rendered the text as “a nation of
line by line,” or “a nation meted out.”72 Although these explanations don’t
make much sense, perhaps we may see an extended meaning of qaw in the
difficult word qaw-qaw in the sense of “tall.” Such a semantic development
is found in the Syriac mšwh t H, which the Peshit ta uses to translate both qāw
in Isa 28:17, where the meaning is “measuring-line,” and anshe midah in
Isa 45:14 where the meaning is “tall men” (gbr H dmšwh t H). Our passage
then would provide a parallelism between goy memušakh and goy qawqaw,
assuming memušakh to mean “tall.”
There is yet one other possibility for the word qaw-qaw. It is suggestive
that the Arabic geographers, from the ninth century C.E. onward, commonly refer to a black African people and place by the name of Kawkaw or
Qawqaw, “the greatest of the realms of the Sūdān” (Yagqūbı̄). Two objections might be raised to an identity of these people with Isaiah’s qaw-qaw.
The first is geographic: the name Kawkaw (Qawqaw) in the Arabic sources
is identified with the toponym Gao, which, situated on the Niger, is considerably west of Kush. The second is chronological: the earliest references
to a people and place called Kawkaw are geographers who lived more than
fifteen hundred years after Isaiah. As far as the geographic objection is concerned, however, we must remember that biblical Kush (i.e., Isaiah’s perspective) meant black Africa in general. On the other hand, from the Arabic perspective, al-Zuhrı̄ (twelfth century) puts Kawkaw on the Nile and
makes it the capital of H abasha, that is, Kush.73 I have shown elsewhere,
as have others, that in the early centuries of the Common Era there was a
lack of accurate geographic knowledge about Africa.74 The chronological
objection, on the other hand, does not mean that the Kawkaw did not exist
before the Arab geographers wrote about them, or even before there was
a place by that name. It is true that the name Kawkaw is similar to other
reduplicated names by which the Arabs refer to distant peoples deep in
Africa, such as Damdam, Namnam, and Lamlam, as Nehemiah Levtzion
and John Hunwick observe.75 But, once again, this does not mean that the
Arab geographers of the ninth century invented those names. The names
could have been long known among the Semites, whether heard from the
Africans themselves or not, and Isaiah therefore could have referred to
one of them as the Qawqaw people ( goy qaw-qaw). Nonetheless, I would
not push this theory too hard because it requires spanning more than
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
37
fifteen hundred years with conjecture. Since we have no evidence of a
Kawkaw/Qawqaw people contemporaneous with Isaiah or for a long time
after Isaiah, the theory must remain only suggestive.
The Hebrew word mebusah was translated with a negative nuance in the
LXX and the Peshit ta as “trodden down” (katapepathmevnon and dyš respectively) and is reflected in the KJV, which has the same translation. The
negative cast has affected also the translation of the associated word qawqaw in these versions: “without hope” (ajnevlpiston) and “dishonored, disgraced” (mškr).76 The translation of mebusah as “trodden down” assumes
the word to be a passive form of the verb bws, but as scholars have realized,
mebusah is rather a nominal form with the active meaning of “trodding
down” or “trampling.”77 Thus we have “conquering” in RSV and similarly in REB, NAB, NJB, La Sainte Bible, von Orelli, and so on.
A review of what Isaiah had to say about the Kushites indicates that they
were considered to be a people feared for their military might with a reputation for conquest and prowess with the bow. They were known for their
speed of foot, their height, and their smooth skin, which may have taken
on a burnished appearance. They may have also struck Isaiah as a people
with sinewy muscle power (or, alternatively, as a people whose language
sounded strange). Finally, their nautical accomplishments were noted.
Given this description it should not be surprising to find biblical scholars
concluding, “In Isa 18:1–2 the Ethiopians are regarded with something
akin to admiration,” or “One detects in [Isaiah’s] words a certain measure
of admiration for this exuberant, youthful people, which had so recently
entered on the stage of world history.”78 The one characteristic that comes
across most strongly in Isaiah’s words is military prowess, a feature for
which the Nubians were apparently well known in the ancient world.
Speaking of the First Intermediate Period in Egypt (2258–2040 B.C.E.),
Henry Fischer said: “It . . . seems likely that the Nubians enjoyed considerable prestige among the Upper Egyptians at Gebelein on account of their
prowess as hunters and warriors.”79 As Strabo said (17.1.53), the ancients
believed the Ethiopians to be warlike. Even the characteristic of swiftness
is associated with this ability, as we saw in the Taharqa inscription and as
we can see in Ps 19:6/5, “rejoicing like a warrior to his course.” Such an
association goes back a long way, for several Egyptian inscriptions from
about the First Intermediate Period, including one speaking of Nubians,
link running speed with military prowess.80
Jeremiah 13:23
No doubt the best-known line in the Bible about the Kushites/Ethiopians
is Jer 13:23 “Can the Kushite change his skin or the leopard his spots? Just
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as much can you do good, who are practiced in doing evil.” A straightforward reading of this verse cannot uncover any negative sentiment toward
the Kushite, or toward black skin. Jeremiah is simply using the Kushite’s
black skin as a metaphor for that which is unchangeable.81 Although Jeremiah’s perspective is that of a non-Kushite, who assumes that black is not
the normal skin color, there is no value judgment implied in the use of the
metaphor. However, less literal interpretations, more homiletical in nature,
saw the prophet as playing on the color symbolism of blackness when he
compared Ethiopians and leopards to sinners who “whether totally black
or only spotted” are still sinners.82 With these kinds of interpretations, it
is not surprising that an African American Christian author, Alfred Dunston, could say, “The passage . . . is almost always used to say that one must
be content with the misfortune of being what he is. . . . [This understanding presents] the picture of the poor unfortunate Ethiopian who would
most certainly change his skin if he could; but alas he cannot.”83 Dunston
refutes this meaning: “Jeremiah was not commiserating either with the
Ethiopian or the leopard.”84 Jeremiah’s rhetorical question implying nothing more than immutability has its parallel in an ancient Egyptian wisdom
saying, “There is no Nubian who leaves his skin,”85 as well as in the Greek
proverb, “It’s like trying to wash an Ethiopian white.”86
Jeremiah 38:7–13
In addition to Moses’ wife, another biblical personality identified as a Kushite
is Ebed-melech. “Ebed-melech the Kushite” was in the service of the Judahite
king Zedekiah (Gebed-melekh literally means “servant, or vassal, of the king”)
and saved the prophet Jeremiah’s life (Jer 38:7–13).87 He is rewarded for
this deed by God’s promise that he would survive the coming destruction of
the kingdom: “You shall escape with your life, because you trusted Me—declares the Lord” (Jer 39:15–18). The Hebrew text calls Ebed-melech a saris,
which may mean either “eunuch” or “palace official.”88 In any case, the Bible
presents him as a righteous man and casts him in a heroic role.
Jeremiah 36:14 (LXX 43:14), Zephaniah 1:1, Psalms 7:1
Aside from kushi as an ethnic designation (gentilic) for Moses’ wife (Num
12:1) and Ebed-melech (Jer 38:7–13), Kush or Kushi is found elsewhere
in the Bible as a personal name. A Yehudi son of Nethanyahu son of Shelemyahu son of Kushi is employed by the royal court of Yehoiakim, king of
Judah (Jer 36:14). The father of the prophet Zephaniah is named Kushi:
“The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah son of Kushi son of
THE BIBLICAL PEOPLE OF KUSH
39
Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah, during the reign of King Josiah
son of Amon of Judah” (Zeph 1:1). A psalm of David begins with the ascription “which he [David] sang to the Lord, concerning Kush, a Benjaminite” (Ps 7:1).89
There are three opinions as to the origin of the personal name Kush or
Kushi in the Bible. First, some say that it was originally a gentilic indicating land of origin, which in time became a personal name. One might compare the name of Kashta, the second Kushite king known to us (reigned
ca. 760–747 B.C.E.), which probably means “the Kushite,” or the names
Kusaia, Kusaiu, Kusi, and Kusitu (feminine), all meaning “Kushite,” which
occur in various Akkadian documents.90 On the basis of this explanation,
Roger Anderson has argued that the Kushi names in the Bible indicate that
dark-skinned Africans (Saharan and sub-Saharan) had settled in some areas
of Palestine, were incorporated into the mixed population of Syria-Palestine, and became accepted as members of Israelite society.91 The Bible
scholar Gene Rice has gone further and attempted to pinpoint a specific
historic incident for the arrival of some biblical Kushites. He thinks that as
a result of the alliance between the twenty-fifth (Kushite) Dynasty of Egypt
and the kingdom of Judah against Assyria, a number of Kushites came to
Judah.92 Whenever their arrival, it is not difficult to conceive of Kushites
or black Africans in ancient Israelite society. Evidence for such may be indicated from the “negro head” seals found in ancient Israel from as early
as the thirteenth century B.C.E.93
Second, some scholars are of the opinion that the personal name Kushi
found in the Bible is a common West Semitic name found in several languages (Epigraphic Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, and Phoenician) and has
nothing to do with a land of origin.94 Finally, a third opinion holds that
the name could indeed mean “Nubian” but was given to a non-Nubian for
other reasons, for example, for political purposes (to identify with the
Egyptian-Nubian dynasty), or as a nickname referring to one’s work (a
merchant, say, trading with Nubia) or one’s dark complexion.95 A similar
situation exists with the Egyptian name P ‰-nh sy, familiar to us from its biblical form Pinh as (Phinehas), which literally means “the Nubian.” The
name may be used in Egyptian for someone whose skin is dark but who is
not a Nubian.96
To summarize the ancient Israelite perception of the black African, references to Kushites in the Bible fall into three categories: one comment
about skin color, several statements about specific Kushites living among
the Israelites, and Isaiah’s description of the people of Kush living in their
own land. The comment about skin color is a proverb about immutability
drawn from the permanent genetic dark skin of the African as opposed to
the temporary dark skin acquired from the sun or from dirt. It implies no
value judgment about the African’s skin color. Of statements about indi-
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viduals, a few Kushites served in the Judahite royal court; one was a runner for David’s army, another was a trusted attendant of the prophet Jeremiah, who is portrayed by the biblical author as a hero and is rewarded by
God. If the name Kushi, father of Zephaniah, indicates an African origin,
then one of the biblical prophets had black African ancestry. If the LXX
translation of the Kushite in Num 12:1 as “Ethiopian” is correct, Moses
had a black African wife. While we cannot be sure of the ethnicity of Zephaniah’s father and Moses’ wife, the fact that there is no biblical statement
indicating a negative sentiment speaks loudly. No biblical writer thought it
necessary to say of Zephaniah’s father or Moses’ wife, “but they were only
Midianites; they were not Africans.” No writer thought it necessary to
comment about their skin color. That precisely is what is so noticeable by
its absence in the Isaiah passage. The prophet reflects the Israelite perception of the black African as a militarily powerful people—a feared people
with muscle power, fast of foot and accurate with the bow. Isaiah says that
they are tall and good-looking. He mentions their accomplishments with
boat construction. But in his descriptive catalog of these people, he “did
not think it worth while to mention that their skins were dark.”97 Nor is
skin color ever mentioned in descriptions of other biblical Kushites. That
is the most significant perception, or lack of perception, in the biblical
image of the black African.